Public sector managers face constant challenges from having to form the foremost of limited organizational resources. HR should manage staff salaries and performance. It’s to fulfill software requirements in the most cost-effective way. When put next to other areas of overhead, often energy consumption isn’t managed with an identical level of rigor. And this suggests many organizations are wasting money on energy bills when that cash might be used way more productively elsewhere.
Implementing best practice energy management may be achieved with a decent set of policies, practices, and procedures. It is not rocket science, but it does take time to urge it right. Much like saving power at homes where Easy Power Plan can help, the public sector must start with a change.
To assist you and your organization to grasp the advantages of energy efficiency, here are some top tips supported our experience at the Carbon Trust of working with many public sector bodies to chop carbon emissions and save cash.
Policy and strategy
The best place to begin is by setting a focused policy and targets for energy use. Crucially, these elements must come from the highest and carry the endorsement of senior management. This policy should contain a transparent commitment to proactively minimize energy waste, which might then form the idea for a close strategy that describes targets, timeframes, and responsibilities.
Supported by clear key performance indicators and reporting requirements and ‘SMART’ should be the targets are. It could consider the Carbon Trust Standard or a structured, externally auditable approach like the international standard for energy management, ISO 50001. The Scottish Government demonstrates achievements in reducing carbon emissions, water, and waste using the Carbon Trust Standard to drive ongoing progress, as an example.
Organizational structure and compliance
The best performers tend to make sure that a private at board level or equivalent holds overall responsibility for energy across the organization. An energy strategy might also identify other individuals who are in control of specific aspects of energy use, like procurement, reporting, monitoring, and efficiency. Where appropriate, thought could even be given to appointing local energy managers or champions at different sites.
Senior management should also regularly review and understand their organization’s legal obligations in relevancy energy use and carbon emissions, which involves putting a compliance plan in situ with clear staff responsibilities. The legislative landscape during this area has changed quite a bit over the past few years, as a result of the necessity to accommodate global climate change, with stronger regulations expected in the future. It’s important to grasp which regulations apply, what’s coming down the road, and where action might have to be taken across various parts of your organization.
Procurement and investment
Where a general procurement policy exists, this could be updated to reflect the energy consumption of the kit being purchased, which is able to affect the whole cost of ownership. Buy not just on the upfront cost, but on the lifetime cost of the asset, in other words. Additionally, specific policies for considering the energy efficiency of particular varieties of equipment will be very useful, like plant and lighting. Where new buildings, extensions, or refurbishments are being considered energy performance should certainly be specified within the look stage.
It is important that each one capital funding request is assessed by the person with ultimate responsibility for energy, and regarded against clear payback criteria, or other thresholds used for investment. As practicing proactive maintenance instead of reactive correction will prevent money within the long run, maintenance budgets should also include provisions for energy-consuming equipment.
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Monitoring and analyzing
Good management requires good measurement to attain ongoing savings it’s crucial to proactively collect accurate. Timely information on energy consumption and price. Serious thought should therefore lean to setting up the place a comprehensive energy sub-metering, monitoring, and targeting (MM&T) system before any roll-out of an energy reduction strategy, in order that the impact may be accurately tracked and reported on.
Insights required to optimize energy performance throughout your organization will be provided by the installation of an appropriate MM&T system. At the foremost basic level, an efficient system involves four key steps: data collection, data analysis, communication, and action.
The identification and establishment of ‘energy accountable centers’ (known as EACs), within which sub-meters have to be installed, is one of the foremost important factors in implementing a successful MM&T system. These are commonly made of individual sites or particular engineering systems, like heating, ventilation, and air-con equipment, lighting circuits, or predicament systems.
Factoring in variables like the number of users, external temperature, or available natural lighting, energy consumption can then be measured and monitored. This can be usually done through a software interface, which might help collate, analyze and report usage. Internal processes then have to be established to act on the data provided by the system. Month-on-month or year-on-year comparisons, out-of-hours consumption, or exception reports where usage exceeds pre-set limits are included in useful reports commonly obtained from MM&T systems.
Opportunities identification
A crucial opening in identifying energy-saving opportunities and prioritizing where action should happen is an effective MM&T system when used well. Many of the first actions are likely to be low-cost or no-cost, with much low-hanging fruit frequently available.
For example, there are plenty of organizations unnecessarily using high levels of energy outside core business hours. And an efficient planned, preventive maintenance (PPM) regime, with comprehensive management of energy assets, will avoid waste and anticipate problems.
Depending on your internal expertise, you will also wish to commission external energy audits to delve deeper into your energy-using systems, to induce an expert opinion on ways to optimize consumption.
For identifying and implementing projects, there is a commonly-used energy hierarchy. This suggests that no-cost or low-cost opportunities should be acted upon first, followed by cost-effective invest-to-save opportunities. As these typically have longer payback periods, only of these energy efficiency opportunities are exhausted should the use of renewable technologies be considered.